Del Monte Corporation

Good day and welcome to Fresh Del Monte Produce second quarter 2021 earnings conference call. Today's conference is being broadcast live over the internet and it's also being recorded for playback purposes. At this time, all participants are in the listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. If you're requiring further assistance, please press the star zero. For opening remarks and introductions, I would like to turn the call over to the Vice President, Best Relations with Fresh Del Monte Produce, Christine Cannella. Please go ahead, Ms. Cannella.

Thank you, Brian. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our second quarter 2021 conference call. As Brian mentioned, I'm Christine Cannella, Vice President, Investor Relations with Cresto Money Produce. Joining me in today's discussion are Mohamed Boubazali, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Eduardo Becerra, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. I hope that you had a chance to review the press release that was issued earlier this morning by a business lawyer. You may also visit the company's website at freshdelmonte.com for a copy of today's release as well as to register for future distributions. This conference call is being webcast live on our website and will be available for replay after this call. Please note that our press release and our call today include non-GAAP measures. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures are set forth in the press release we issued today and on the company's website at freshsalmonte.com under the Investor Relations tab. I would like to remind you that much of the information we will be speaking to today, including the answers we give in response to your questions, may include forward-looking statements within the provisions of the Federal Security State Harbor Law. In today's press release and in our SEC filings, We detail material risks that may cause our future results to differ from these forward-looking statements. Our statements are as of today, August the 4th, and we have no obligation to update any forward-looking statement we may make. With that, I am pleased to turn today's call over to Mohamed.

Thank you, Christine. Good morning, everyone. During the second quarter of 2021, we delivered strong financial results with growth throughout several key areas of our business, which will be highlighted by Eduardo. However, as it was reported this morning, our gross profit for the quarter increased 40% from last year and gross margin increased from 7.2% in the prior year period to 9.6% in the second quarter of 2021. Gross margin is an important component of our strategic transformation to a value-added global food company. And this is reflected in our strong year-over-year operating income and net income. Like many other companies, we are facing unprecedented disruptions in global supply chains and shortages of labor resulting in significant cost increases. During the second quarter, we experienced inflation in labor, fuel, inland trade, packaging, production, and procurement costs. We anticipate these inflationary pressures will remain for the near term and have taken proactive measures to counter the impacts on our results, including a comprehensive review of our pricing strategy and sourcing plans for the remainder of the year. We made additional progress with our global operational initiatives as well during the quarter. For example, in Europe, we restructured our fresh operations in France that led to increased efficiencies and cost savings. We entered into a licensing agreement with a UK retailer to brand frozen fruit and chilled juices, which offers a new revenue opportunity for us in europe that can be expanded to other markets in the middle east and africa as you may have seen in our press release this morning as a result of our strong cash position our board of directors approved an increase in our quarterly cash dividend to 15 cents per share as you know the second half of the year is historically a tougher market for our industry and this year in particular as we do not see inflationary and cost pressures ending in the near future. Before I turn the call over to Eduardo, I am pleased to share that we will soon publish Fresh Delamonte's annual corporate responsibility and sustainability report, detailing our guiding principles and continued progress since our last sustainability update. We look forward to sharing the report with you. At this point, I will turn the call to Eduardo to talk about the second quarter financial results. Eduardo.